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New Johns Hopkins center examines genetic pathways of breast cancer

A new research center at Johns Hopkins University is using computer models to uncover patterns in the genetic pathways of breast cancer.

Backed by a $5 million grant from the National Cancer Institute, biomedical engineer Joel Bader and cell biologist Andrew Ewald have joined forces with Johns Hopkins clinicians to explore this research area, according to Johns Hopkins.

“I started thinking that no one had really studied the invasive process quantitatively,” Bader said in the article. “The idea was to see which of these different pathways might be significant for people's cancers.”

While traditional efforts to identify breast cancer targets focus exclusively on late-stage tumors, the Hopkins team is working with normal breast tissue through its development to a diverse range of tumor stages. They're interested in the process of metastasis, responsible for the overwhelming majority of deaths from breast cancer, according to the article.